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Puncturing the sanctimony

Anthony Esolen puts biting irony to good effect in an essay for Public Discourse, in the course of which he turns Social Democracy’s favorite passage from Scripture on its head.

“The least of these,” words of Our Lord recorded in Matthew 25 that Esolen has ironically taken for his title, are often cited as evidence of a Christian obligation to build national bureaucracies of compassion to alleviate want. Liberal folks who, balking at the interference in public of Christian virtue or discipline or moral instruction, would usually be quick to adduce a certain secular scripture on separation of church and state, at once casually discard their vigilance against religious teaching if that teaching appears to support welfare or Social Democratic policies.

But it is the sanctimony that Social Democrats can get up to, that fever-pitch of self-righteousness conflating support for welfare policies with personal compassion, which invites the kind of searing irony the characterizes Esolen’s essay, especially its conclusion.

“You declared a War on Poverty, aimed at me, when you should have declared a War on Vice, aimed first of all at yourselves.

“You loved your vice more than you loved me. You could afford your vices, but I could not. Your vices made your lives, as you thought, more exciting. I did not have your cushion of wealth, so the same vices destroyed me.

“I was lonely, and you bought me a whore. My sisters were lonely, and you made them into whores.

“I needed the Church, desperately, because when a man is poor, he must face his helplessness every day. But the Church would restrain you, so, at every chance you had, you derided religious faith, and thus you snatched from me my most loyal friend.

“I had no job, and you overtaxed the man who might have given me one. Then you gave the job to someone on the other side of the world, or you winked while men left their families thousands of miles away, crossing the border to work at low wages, and you yourselves hired them, and ducked the taxes that you yourselves established. In this way you managed to do mayhem to two families at once.

“I was in prison, and needed to learn a trade, but you teamed up with union bosses to make sure I would not. You gave me dull and useless classes in communication, and television.”

[. . .]

“I needed a father to show me how to love women, and you gave me porn.

“I once had virtue, the poor man’s heritage, but you trained me in vice.”

[. . .]

“I needed a father, I always needed a father, and you turned your back on me, and told me what you knew was a lie, that a mother or two mothers or a mother and a boyfriend would do just as well. When it didn’t work out, you blamed everything but your own selfishness.

“I needed a father, and you were too busy with your sexual innovations to notice it.”

That is what we call the prophetic voice.

Or, as Clausewitz put it: “Direct annihilation of the enemy's forces must always be the dominant consideration.”

Comments (40)

The "you" in all this is the "technocratic managers" who "give" to those in "need".

What's missing is personal responsibility. The whole essay presupposes a reliance on the state for sustenance ("I needed this, you gave that"). Where is the self-reliance that used to characterize Americans? Self-reliance and government subsidies are diametrically opposed.

Baloney. It isn't the state per se. It's the social innovators. They do sometimes work through the state, but not always. Is it "working through the state" to let homosexuals adopt? Sort of and sort of not.

By the way, Daniel, as a libertarian, you should definitely like several things Esolen says there. For example, he points out how government policies of taxing the rich are actually harmful to the poor by undermining jobs. He isn't saying that the government was responsible to give the poor man a job! Far from it. He's saying what libertarians always say--that the government shouldn't be out there doing harm, harming jobs and the economy, in its ridiculous pretense of doing good! Similarly, the war against right-to-work laws is something every libertarian should oppose, as Esolen is opposing it, and so forth. I think your response is a little knee-jerk.

My larger point was lost by my unfortunate use of the term "state". What I should have said was that the whole essay presupposes a reliance on others for sustenance.

"I needed to learn to calculate, and you handed me a machine that would do it for me."

"I needed a father, and you gave me the gang leader selling crack cocaine."

"I needed a father to show me how to love women, and you gave me porn."

These arguments make it sound like there are no other choices beyond what's given - what's easiest. It makes each individual a product of his/her environment. They are excuses for laziness, poor behavior, bad choices and lack of responsibility.

Americans used to be self-reliant. It used to be that poverty and a poor environment was something we would look to overcome - not something we would expect someone else to "fix".

"I needed a father, and you gave me the gang leader selling crack cocaine. I rejected that gang leader and instead chose to be a good father so my son would have what I didn't have."

But Daniel, surely you'll acknowledge that in the economic realm, if the government destroys jobs, self-reliance is not going to cure the problem. The jobs are just not there. You shd. give up your libertarian membership card if you don't believe govt. can destroy the economy. :-)

I realize it will be harder to convince you that rotten social agendas can also make things an _awful_ lot harder for individuals to turn out morally good. Remember that not all individuals have Christianity to help them. Are they still responsible for the wrong that they have done? Sure, in the sense that if they beat people up or rob, they deserve to go to jail. But remember what Jesus said about millstones. He seems to have believed that others who cause people to stumble by messing them up when they are young do indeed bear a heavy load of responsibility and deserve great blame. The seller of pornography shouldn't be let off the hook for _his_ personal responsibility just because, hey, other people (including kids) might have had the willpower not to use his product and harm themselves.

It is simply true that parents and those in loco parentis have a responsibility toward their children. We can't slough off the responsibility not to engage in destructive behaviors or destructive experiments--those that deny a child a father, for example--by the argument that ultimately the older person is responsible for his own actions. That would mean a moral license to parents, judges, prospective parents, and so forth, to do whatever they wanted with complete recklessness regarding the consequences. Whatever one thinks the legal set-ups should be, any sane person should acknowledge that there is no such moral "do what you will" permission. At a minimum we will be held responsible before God if we have selfishly done things that we have every reason to know will harm the moral, social, and/or physical well-being of the children to whom we have direct relationships.

These arguments make it sound like there are no other choices beyond what's given - what's easiest. It makes each individual a product of his/her environment. They are excuses for laziness, poor behavior, bad choices and lack of responsibility.

Actually, Daniel, I doubt very much that Esolen is doing that. I suspect that what he is doing, rather, is turning their own rhetorical devices on themselves. THEY are the ones who argued, in the throes of the War on Poverty, that poverty causes the social ills that they were pointing to. THEY were the ones that claimed environmental conditions are responsible for vicious behavior, instead of the moral vice being of persons being the cause. Esolen is simply applying their own logic. I am quite sure that he doesn't discount the need for personal moral responsibility.

Daniel Smith,
Why there are no libertarians among Hindus or Arabs?.
You ignore that the State creates individuals. That is, your individual moral vision is to a great extent a national product. Otherwise, you can not explain national characteristics nor even conceive that Americans used to be self-reliant people (thereby implying that Europeans for instance were not).

The Ruling element, by definition of what ruling means, influences the individual moral vision to a great extent. Thus, Esolen is justified by calling out to the elite who give

I would not argue with Esolen but is it really so that taxes are hurting job-creators that much?. Are tax-rates confiscatory in America?
And why the focus on jobs?> And here we recall the prescient words of Chesterton about the Capitalism and the decay of private (productive) property in the Modern Age--the words generally incomprehensible to the Conservatives. How many Conservatives can read The Utopia of Usurers without rage and disgust? And yet, each single word therein is true.

Because jobs can be very good for people. I like Chesterton, but if he was anti-jobs on the grounds that everyone should own his own little business, etc., then he was exaggerating. Which would hardly be beyond him. Jobs are in general a good of society, assuming they are not jobs doing bad things. Esolen is completely right. Leftist policies are bad for the poor, though leftists portray themselves as the benefactors of the poor.

I'd like to point out that you brought up libertarianism Lydia, not me - just in case we get accused of thread jacking!

That would mean a moral license to parents, judges, prospective parents, and so forth, to do whatever they wanted with complete recklessness regarding the consequences. Whatever one thinks the legal set-ups should be, any sane person should acknowledge that there is no such moral "do what you will" permission.

The thing many people don't understand is that libertarianism places the onus on the individual to be both responsible and accountable for their actions and how they affect others. People see libertarianism as unbridled freedom with no consequences - nothing could be further from the truth. Libertarianism is all about personal responsibility and personal accountability. If you father a child - you are responsible for raising that child and accountable if you do not fulfill that responsibility. The state, in a libertarian society, would doggedly hold people accountable for actions that adversely affect others. That is the sole purpose of the libertarian state - to protect and defend the innocent.

What we've done in this country is to eliminate responsibility and accountability; we make it easy for a mother and child to live without a father. We do not hold the mother or the father accountable for the act of creating a child when they are not in a position to properly raise that child. We do not protect the innocent child - instead we protect the guilty parents. The state rewards and subsidizes irresponsibility. We've got it backwards.

The state, in a libertarian society, would doggedly hold people accountable for actions that adversely affect others. That is the sole purpose of the libertarian state - to protect and defend the innocent.

Wow. I mean, just WOW. I didn't realize just how deep and illogical the rot was.

Daniel, let's imagine for the moment the state "holding accountable" a father who cheats on his wife, pushes her to get a divorce, and then becomes a deadbeat dad who (while paying child support - at least most of the time) does NOTHING ELSE to raise his son and daughter. Let's then ask "by what means shall the state hold this guy accountable?"

The only possible answer, of course, is by passing laws to make his cheating on his wife illegal, and to make his ignoring his children illegal. There is no other way "holding him accountable" will happen. Sure, the state can ask him to be a good husband and father, it can encourage him, it can urge him and recommend it as much as the state wants. But unless the state puts teeth on its encouragement by negative consequences to him, i.e. PENALTIES, then the state cannot actually "hold him to account" when he blows off the suggestions and recommendations. Suppose he doesn't get a divorce, but he is still a distant father, never around, never attentive, never emotionally there for them. The state is going to hold him accountable for his defective fathering, by making these illegal also?

So, there we have it: in Daniel's libertarian world, the state makes it illegal for a husband to sleep around, and illegal for him to not be involved as a father, penalties for not being emotionally committed to raising kids well. It would protect those innocent kids from bad fathers being jerks and self-centered pigs. Possibly, if this dad did not get the message after several rounds of warnings and penalties, the state will take the kids away from him to protect them.

Boy, that's either completely wrong, or so badly put as to cry out to heaven for correction. I will assume the latter for the moment. Gian, what you should have said is that "Society forms the individuals." Not the state, society. Because society is both prior to the state and larger (more inclusive) than the state. Society has avenues of action, ways of handing down views and truths, methods of rewarding and punishing, that are outside the scope of the state's activity. (For example, society uses shame to push people away from forbidden actions, and uses national stories to pass along truth and perspectives, neither of which need be the object of state action.) In addition, of course, to society using the state itself for its purposes. Yes, society, after God creates an individual with the co-creating cooperation of parents, does indeed help form the individual.

The state's laws and other pursuits help to mold the future of society, as well as other parts of society having an impact on the state's form. Since "society" includes the state itself and more besides, it is misleading to say that state affects society and society affects the state. Rather the part of society that is the state affects other parts of society, and vice versa. But society itself is prior to the state, because the state is always an outflowing of society's conscious and sub-conscious decisions on how to govern the people, choices made within the social fabric and its particular constraints.

One thing I want to draw attention to is the meaning of Paul's title. He's talking, I would guess, about the sanctimony of faux victims on the left. The people who want to experiment with families and children portray themselves as the victims of bigotry and the like, when in fact it is they who are being selfish and greedy, and the young people whose lives are messed up are their victims. And the same, mutatis mutandis, for the union bosses who portray themselves as victims when the jobless and/or those whose income they skim by force are the real victims of their policies.

Let's then ask "by what means shall the state hold this guy accountable?"
The only possible answer, of course, is by passing laws to make his cheating on his wife illegal, and to make his ignoring his children illegal.

Not necessarily.

The kind of judicial system I envision would be more along the lines of our civil courts than our criminal courts. In this environment, a wife could go before a judge and complain that the husband is an absentee dad. The judge could review the evidence and impose penalties on the father at his discretion. There wouldn't need to be a specific statute making cheating and divorce illegal - just a general principle that those who father children must provide adequately for their well-being.

The particular sanctimony I had in mind, Lydia, was the liberal politician who cites Matthew 25 or some fragment of the Epistle of St. James in order to establish that votes for social democrats are the very fulfillment of Scripture. That said, sanctimony, in turns out, is a character trait common among levellers and nanny-staters. Mayor Bloomberg in NYC might truthfully be the most sanctimonious politician in America. Watch one of his presser of large sodas or guns or gay marriage: the man's self-righteousness is absolutely unbounded.

Worse and worse. "penalties on the father at his discretion," based on whose definition of "harm"? What about a "general principle" that those who do ill are to be brought to account, including a husband looking at pretty women with lust, or a wife spending more on dresses than is good for the family? Does a husband who lets his thoughts stray to the woman next door harm his wife? Are you going to have a judge rule on EVERYTHING that harms others, including emotional harm, relationship harm, etc?

Instead of Dad knowing what constitutes "harm" in a legal sense by actual law, he would have to submit his own stream of prudential decisions to the extraneous prudential decisions of a judge, who is flying by the seat of his pants on it because there is no specific law that spells out what is meant by "adequate for their well-being". If the judge thinks spanking for a certain family offense is too harsh, or maybe he thinks it isn't harsh enough, he might "hold Dad accountable" for that with penalties and so on because that father isn't providing adequately for the child's well being. You're just replacing one potential tyrant for another, without any basis for thinking it is better.

Look, I have no problem with wanting to have society use other mechanisms than law and other enforcers than the judicial/penal system to guide people, including with negative encouragement. But if you want the STATE to do it, based on an OFFICIAL sense of "harm", then you better jolly well have laws define harm rather than leave it up to a judge to decide what threshhold he wants to impose because of the way he was raised.

Daniel, I suspect that a close-knit town can be ruled the way you describe. Maybe even a whole county, if the population is already very cohesive in terms of religion, morals, ethnicity, customs, and so on, and as long as there is no large metropolis - as long as the population is small enough. But nothing larger. You would have to go back to the city-states of ancient Greece, with 10,000 citizens and 100,000 total population to do that. Now, recall the amount of internecine bickering between the Greek states, and imagine America filled with 3,000 such city-states. Peace would never last as much as 6 months.

Tony,
There has never been a society without a state. I do agree that "forms" is better than "creates" though.
It should be kept in mind that by "state" I do not mean Govt but the organized society that embodies a particular set of laws among a particular people. And the laws include both the written laws and the customs of a people-that is the Way of a People. That the state serves justice in the people by meting out punishments to offenders is the characteristic feature of the state.

It should be kept in mind that by "state" I do not mean Govt but the organized society that embodies a particular set of laws among a particular people. And the laws include both the written laws and the customs of a people-that is the Way of a People.

Ah, miscommunication of meaning. I see. I was using "society" as distinct from the "state", where society is the entire enchilada of the community with all its laws, customs, people, stories, language, culture, etc; and I meant by "state" the explicit rules and definite rulers in charge of ordering for the common good. Thanks for noticing the difference.

Daniel, I suspect that a close-knit town can be ruled the way you describe. Maybe even a whole county, if the population is already very cohesive in terms of religion, morals, ethnicity, customs, and so on, and as long as there is no large metropolis - as long as the population is small enough. But nothing larger. You would have to go back to the city-states of ancient Greece, with 10,000 citizens and 100,000 total population to do that.

I think community governments like you describe would be the key to making a system like mine work because, you're right, trying to make a cohesive "one size fits all" Federal or even State policy would be disastrous.

Now, recall the amount of internecine bickering between the Greek states, and imagine America filled with 3,000 such city-states. Peace would never last as much as 6 months.

What's needed is a decentralized system: one where the Federal gov't is mainly an arbiter to keep the peace between these city-states. This way, people who didn't want to live under strict religious interpretations of right and wrong could seek out a community where such things are not emphasized - and vice versa.

Daniel, I have mentioned exactly that sort of thing before. Perhaps, if we went to small villages where people really could enforce a uniformity of morals, standards, customs etc, inside the village, at home, they would be more willing to allow states and federal rules to be looser. I am not sure that would happen. But if I could guarantee that the state and federals would butt out of my refusing to sell my house to an X person because he would disturb my neighbors, for example, and if I could find a village congenial to my outlook and morals, I wouldn't mind as much if other villages around saw things differently, and if they were required to keep themselves out of our affairs.

If you could carve out "villages" of 10,000 people all committed to the same standards, you could have 50 of them in a city, and 50 different outlooks on how to conduct life could be accommodated. But then, when you go off to work, what do you do, leave behind your standards and accept those of some opposed group? What about the offices of the state or federal gov, who "mainly" act as arbiters to keep the peace - do they not have ANY standards or morals at all, so as to not offend any of the 50 different ways of conducting life? Unfortunately, while I think we can move something closer to true subsidiarity than we have now, I don't think it is possible to have a peace-keeper entity without having some particular notion of standards that they will run by, and any such particular choice will be offensive to some group or other. That's why (among other reasons) I think that natural law provides rather that some ways of conducting life are not acceptable, and we have not only the right but duty to enforce them. Enslaving others, for example, should be off-limits to all groups regardless of their moral beliefs about the practice.

Math fluency, such as the ability to perform arithmetic computations or the memorization of math facts, does not significantly influence results on (zero-sum) standardized tests. Calculation is not a significantly g-loaded skill, and therefore not picked up on g-loaded tests. SAT/ACT scores are of paramount importance, and the proliferation of calculators does not impair one's ability to perform on g-loaded tests, as the results on these tests are important measure to get into prestigious educational institutions and hence high-tier career tracks. Calculation without abstraction (which is an innate ability) is worthless.

People are limited by what they can do economically by their score on g-loaded tests (since it is a critical labor market signaling, although indirect, via college admissions), not necessarily by the educational establishments' inability to instruct them.

Americans used to be self-reliant. It used to be that poverty and a poor environment was something we would look to overcome - not something we would expect someone else to "fix".

Perhaps I am trolling because I cannot sustain a conversation tomorrow and I just want to elicit a response. (I just went on an irrelevant tangent about how it is the student's lack of academic ability (g or general intelligence) to advance through the meritocracy that hampers them, not necessarily improper educational instruction from an educational system influenced by liberal ideals.)

(And no, I am no longer a social democrat; I am not that concerned with domestic fiscal policy anymore, nor I do even proffer a welfare state a solution for societies pathologies, although it most certainly can assuage material privation, but it will fail to afford the poor some real dignity. I just want people to live materially content lives in peace and dignity, which is infinitely more important than the quixotic ideals of "freedom" and "self-reliance", in a relatively economically egalitarian social milieu. My views are somewhat harder to attack since they are not mainstream leftist or conservative, and I am not willing to reveal them here.) I am primarily apolitical now and do not integrate political platforms, whether social democratic, liberal, or traditionalist, into my faith. This integration of political views into religious faith is a bete noire for me, and I disliked the pro-life movement in the United States because of its association with the Republican Party and its overtly regressive social and economic policies. But still I don't see what's wrong with criticizing conservatives for their insouciance regarding the travails of the poor, even if I agree with conservative, although for different reasons, that the expansion of the welfare state would simply fail to rectify the problems of the poor.

But where is the evidence for increased social mobility throughout the United State's history?

Black Rose, as my friend Hunter Baker says, the reason people “bring their comprehensive views to bear” on political reality “is that they have integrity.” Your endorsement of a strong secularism is precisely an integration of your theologico-philosophical views into politics. To which you then add a statement of mere prejudice about pro-lifers and their political associations.

As for the argument about mental calculation and g-loading, I am likewise unimpressed. A high intelligence child never drilled in "arithmetic computations or the memorization of math facts" may well succeed despite that deficiency. It is the kid of lesser intelligence who needs this drilling. How do you expect a family to adopt a budget and discipline themselves by it when the head of the family cannot compute adequately and lacks knowledge of basic math facts? In a word, I think your response amounts to an illustration of what Esolen is denouncing: elsewhere you give us elaborate astrophysical dilations on stellar objects and here you're blowing off education in math computation and foundational fact. The contrast is striking.

What's needed is a decentralized system: one where the Federal gov't is mainly an arbiter to keep the peace between these city-states. This way, people who didn't want to live under strict religious interpretations of right and wrong could seek out a community where such things are not emphasized - and vice versa.

Daniel Smith, like Tony, I agree that we can move "closer to true subsidiarity" than we are now, but I am at a loss to see how your abstract libertarian declamations can help get us there. The issue of Free Speech alone often exposes the libertarian dilemma: are you prepared to let rural Alabama and Pennsylvania prohibit commercial distribution of smut according to those communities' understanding of virtue and purity? (This means, mind you, permitting these communities to, as many libertarians understand it, fetter and off at the end confiscate the property of the corporations which produce and distribute the material.)

Other examples of the left's failure of young people in their education include the failure to teach them to read well and spell accurately. Both of these have arisen from educational schools' embrace of fads and from the sclerotic system of teacher accreditation which requires accreditation from an educational establishment that specializes in such anti-educational fads. All of which ill-serves the poor more than anyone else. And such failures are relevant not only to standardized test scores but to ability to do well in many jobs. It's simply true: The policies of the left are bad for the poor again and again and again--economically, morally, and socially. Esolen nails it. The policies of the left are not the "policies helping the little guy."

Right now I'm taking a Foundations to Education class that I surprisingly liked more than I thought I would.

I'm convinced that the biggest issue in education today is the teacher's unions. Tenure is a scourge, it messes up the system in horrible ways and doesn't leave any room for change or improvement.

The unions care far more about the teachers than the children. It's sickening.

The other issue is that the money and programs are in all the wrong places. Kindergarten is most common in richer suburban schools, but it's far more necessary in inner city schools and poor neighborhoods-this is actually true with pretty much any after school activity too.

There are some good superintendents and principals out there, but their hands are tied by the unions. Once a teacher reaches tenure, it's game over. You're stuck with them. This is a problem everywhere, but especially in inner-city schools, where good teachers are more important.

I also dislike "developmentally appropriate" teaching. A good teacher should be able to raise the bar. 6th grade kids can do what Americans consider eighth grade math if the teachers make it interesting-if they're good. But of course, we've reached the vicious cycle stage, where teachers aren't being educated properly to be good teachers either.

Honestly, the change can't be grassroots, and mostly because of the teachers' unions. They need to be taken on directly, and tenure needs to DIE a horrible, horrible death.

I suppose it could be grassroots in the sense that if EVERY superintendent makes a stand things might happen. But that'll never happen.

This is primarily irrelevant and I even called myself out for trolling for discussing this, but I like talking about meritocracy, status signaling, g-loaded tests, and the heritability of intelligence.

you're blowing off education in math computation and foundational fact

If people deem those subjects interesting, then it has inherent value for that particular person. I am primarily blowing off the economic value and practical utility of those subjects for most people (and I never got a penny for knowing what the "Stefan-Boltzmann law" or "electron degeneracy pressure" are, nor was I directly taught the latter although the former was briefly covered in introductory physics, but I still personally value that knowledge) since those skills do not appear to positively affect one's SAT-M score, as a high SAT-M is necessary for admission into a prestigious college.

BTW, I posted this before in September 2012 on Half Sigma's old blog (one of my Lenten sacrifices was to give up reading Half Sigma's new blog):

I am an educational nihilist: the content of education doesn't matter; the factual information in a curriculum is primarily irrelevant economically, except as a means of signaling g and personality traits, such as conscientiousness, to employers.

The influence of the SAT (and ACT) is omnipresent in American tertiary education and labor market; it seems to be the alpha and omega of American education and meritocracy. While Protagoras stated that man is the measure of all things, the SAT is the measure of man. It is the gold standard, immune to the printing press of grade inflation.
...
g is the the main predicative variable for future academic and job performance, not whether a student was able to complete homework assignments or recall material for an exam. That's why g is important or the perception that it is important (as it is shown with the preoccupation with college prestige in elite employers).

...
One's teacher performance is irrelevant when considering one's future socioeconomic position. It is precisely that due to the intractable nature of augmenting g through education that teacher performance is meaningless. As I said before, I am an educational nihilist, and consider the SAT to be an important psychometric instrument, not because it predicts academic outcomes by being g-loaded, but simply because it is a good measure of g, and that is also valued outside of an academic setting.

That's just a tangent on g and education...

===

Your endorsement of a strong secularism is precisely an integration of your theologico-philosophical views into politics.

I suppose a succinct description of my political philosophy and religious beliefs is simply for the state to aim for material contentment and the Peace of Babylon, which would be satisfactory for personal, internal spiritual development and growth. My views are compatible with secularism since the state here does not need to explicitly endorse or act on the behalf of a sectarian religion. Political issues do not affect my spiritual life and I most certainly do not reference any peace of legislation, public policy, political institution, or political philosophy in my prayers. I could have fructuous fellowship and be a pious, meek young woman without being personally invested in contemporary politics, although this does not discourage me to discuss political philosophy on an abstract and theoretical level with some of my spiritual friends. I only revealed my actual political views to a few people (including the Sister who I briefly discussed abortion with), and I see no reason to abandon that perspective and revert to a more "mainstream" position, primarily because I do not find the other alternatives, including social democracy and traditionalism, attractive.

I too dislike the ubiquity of sexually explicit media, and I certainly want children to be protected from its pernicious influence.

To which you then add a statement of mere prejudice about pro-lifers and their political associations.

I also consider the political pro-life movement not be politically sophisticated and disgustingly "prole" due to its correlation with mainstream American conservatism, not necessarily because it was "pro-life". I sometimes point out the distinction between being politically pro-life and being philosophically pro-life.

I had my own reasons for defending Singer's philosophy from a secular perspective, a task I have not yet successfully completed, at least to my own satisfaction or the best of my abilities. The reasons actually have little to do with defending a political philosophy and it is more of an enquiry on why I am personally pro-life now, despite the defense of Singer's conclusions being a critical component of the testimony.

Well, if you're an educational nihilist, that tells us all we need to know. For what it's worth, educational nihilism doesn't do the poor much good, either. It's surprising how much caring about the content of education can help people get an objectively good education. Although I realize that there are areas in which our world does not value a good education, it would be ludicrous to hold that one can treat the content as a black box, be a "nihilist" about its objective value, and actually help a large number of people well to make their way in the world.

MarcAnthony, I have two encouraging words for you: Charter schools. Yes, they are still public schools, and I worry about that, but they've done a lot to break the stranglehold of the teacher's unions and the narrow view of accreditation. As such, they are usually hated by the left and are almost certainly an improvement for the poor on the educational landscape.

I wasn't concerned about assisting the poor through education in my previous posts; I was discussing my cynical perspective on how the educational system operates, not a prescriptive view on educational public policy to ameliorate its perceived inadequacies.

To me, the current system is quite "successful" since it does an excellent job, especially with the instruments of standardized tests and differential college prestige, of signaling high-valued aptitude and personality traits (not knowledge content of educational instruction) to employers through credentials. Some fields do value specific knowledge, but it is mostly the relatively immutable "aptitude and personality traits", that can be signaled through education although it cannot be acquired through instruction, that are valued precisely because they are somewhat scarce commodities in the labor market.

Voila, then. You could stop trolling and think instead about the irony of "criticizing conservatives for insouciance to the travails of the poor" while refusing to recognize the many ways in which the left harms the poor. Again and again and again. Who is insouciant about the harm their policies are doing? Esolen tells us. And more examples could be added to those he gives.

think instead about the irony of "criticizing conservatives for insouciance to the travails of the poor" while refusing to recognize the many ways in which the left harms the poor. Again and again and again. Who is insouciant about the harm their policies are doing? Esolen tells us. And more examples could be added to those he gives.

Ok, since you compelled me to reply, I will state I am quite maternalistic politically.

One of my disagreements with conservatives is that they justify such insouciance with an erroneous belief that most people can be economically self-sufficient in a competent economy. even under the competitive economic environment of globalization. It would be malicious if they know that many people could not acquire skills valued by the labor market to finance a dignified life; it would be naive if they are merely ignorant. I don't think the "self-reliance" rhetoric is done in good faith with the welfare of the poor in mind.

As I said in a previous post, dear friend, some people who are financially secure and have never known what it is to want the basic necesseties, are strangely insensitive towards those who are struggling to survive in reduced circumstances. All the rhetoric about being self-reliant and not burdening others, is nothing more than a cloak to excuse being close-fisted and not getting involved. Moreover, when this is the response of those who supposedly profess the holy religion of Christ, it is just downright deplorable - "But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" (I Jhn. 3: 17) - how indeed! If we see a fellow Christian's need and have the wherewithal to meet it, we cannot stand idly by and make all manner of excuses as to why we cannot help. How easy it is for men to speak of loving Humanity with a capital "H" than it is to love and help individual men and women that are known to us. Loving everybody in general may well be an excuse for loving nobody in particular.

Most posts on that forum are not worth reading since they lack sufficient depth and insight, but I did value "Portrait's" contribution.
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I immediately acknowledged that the tangent on calculation and math fluency was not directly related to the topic on hand (but still was an appropriate response to the allegation that not teaching "calculation" harmed students), but I liked talking about it, so I did not successfully resist the impulse to post the comment. Still, even now, that discussion expanded into examining a key theme that is being discussed in this thread -- whether "liberal" educational policies harm the poor (and not merely being confined to the technical details of whether calculation is measured by standardized tests or valued by society). As an educational nihilist, I argued that they did not, thus one cannot levy that the charge that this is indicative of the failure of the contemporary "liberal" educational institutions. Again, I am not doing this a liberal or statist apologist, but to express my views on education and credential signaling.

Very true. Still, by the numbers, if I'm remembering them correctly, only about five percent of charter schools are *really* effective. The other 95% are either normal public school quality or they just go under.

People criticize the documentary "Waiting for Superman" for lionizing charter schools, but this is because they didn't pay attention and disliked the documentary's conclusions. If they DID pay attention they'd know that the documentary *explicitly stated* that charter schools are a mixed bag, which is why so many people apply to so few-the good ones.

The optimistic thing about charter schools is that you theoretically COULD design a successful one, and it's virtually impossible to turn an unsuccessful public school into a good one thanks, once again, to the unions. So we'll see where it goes. It's disheartening to see so many people who desperately need to go not get in though.

I can see that my philosophy of government has some glaring deficiencies. I agree that there would have to be uniform moral standards in any federal government entity. Perhaps those outlined in the Constitution would be sufficient?

The dilemma I face is the fact that 'freedom' is a two-edged sword that cuts differently for the moral and the immoral.

One of my disagreements with conservatives is that they justify such insouciance with an erroneous belief that most people can be economically self-sufficient in a competent economy.

Well, yes Black_Rose, I see your point - as long as you make the assumption that these people will have to acquire their self-sufficiency at the hands of the current educational system. And assume that the economic system cannot (or will not) be modified for Christian principles.

But if you ditch those 2 assumptions, you find something else: (1) most people can receive the wherewithal to become much more capable towards responsible humanity than they currently exercise on average. The proof is in history: a mere 150 years ago, a notably higher percentage of people DID have the moral, practical, and personal habits of responsible adulthood than now (leaving aside the specific fact-content of their education, which should be irrelevant according to you). See, you note that our existing schools cannot effect a transformation by making people studious, hard-working, conscientious, wisdom-loving people. What I am pointing to is that most people CAN be led to being these things, if they have a different social environment than our modern public schools. Homeschooling proves that over and over and over: even for parents who are not college educated, they can successfully raise children to be bright, industrious, intellectually stimulated and ambitious people even when they don't have vast native intellectual gifts.

(2) There are economic systems or components that can do a better job of making it possible for inherently lower-performing people to reach their own level of competence and productivity, for dignified adulthood, than ours does. Guilds for example. And there are (or can be) economic arrangements that do a better job of quelling outright greed and envy, instead of enhancing them as ours does. For example, a more conscientiously moral board of directors of a large corporation, in doing a job search for the next CEO, could publicly and explicitly castigate some of the applicants for demanding multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses. They should be willing to say "we wouldn't be in the least interested in having as CEO a person who was unable to identify the moral degeneracy of that kind of demand - they would not be qualified for the job." All in all, there is theoretical room for free-market economy arrangements that do a MUCH better job of making space for those who are going to be below middle capacity their entire lives. Especially if those people were not given short shrift by a failed social/educational system designed to create mass-production consumers instead of responsible adult free persons.

To me, the current system is quite "successful" since it does an excellent job, especially with the instruments of standardized tests and differential college prestige, of signaling high-valued aptitude and personality traits (not knowledge content of educational instruction) to employers through credentials.

But even on those terms it does a really poor job in the other direction: it fails to signal to the students themselves the consequences of their choices. It allows students to be readily fooled (where it doesn't mislead the children itself) into thinking that just graduating high school is adequate preparation for adulthood. It fails to locate the students who really are trainable but with just a somewhat more intense effort and pull them out for development: it leaves everyone who doesn't bring their own (otherwise obtained) high ambitions to the schoolhouse in the dust bin, as if they were all untrainable.

You have a very cynical and dispeptic view of what constitutes "satisfactory" outcomes.

"The particular sanctimony I had in mind, Lydia, was the liberal politician who cites Matthew 25 or some fragment of the Epistle of St. James in order to establish that votes for social democrats are the very fulfillment of Scripture."

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